President Barack Obama will nominate Lee Goodman and Ann Ravel to the Federal Election Commission — a small victory for campaign finance reform advocates who have cited the expired terms of all six sitting commissioners as a reason for continued deadlock on campaign fiance issues.

Goodman, a partner with LeClairRyan, and Ravel, chair of the California Fair Political Practices Commission, would replace Republican Don McGahn, whose term expired in April 2009, and Democrat Cynthia Bauerly, who resigned earlier this year.

Both the nominees will have to be confirmed by the Senate. Obama has thus far been unsuccessful in appointing a commissioner to the FEC, which is composed of three Democratic and three Republican commissioners.

Obama’s only other nominee to the panel, labor attorney John Sullivan, eventually withdrew after a 15-month wait.

The FEC has been constantly criticized since the Supreme Court’s Citizen United ruling for failing to enforce campaign finance laws. Reform advocates have been pushing the White House to name nominees for years in hopes that new members could break the partisan deadlock on the commission.

Conservatives have pushed back and argued that the commission is functioning the way it was designed to with three commissioners from both parties — and that the Obama White House even approves of the state of the agency.

“I think one reason that they have not sought to nominate a lot of people to the FEC is that they’ve actually been pretty pleased with how the FEC has performed,” Michael Toner, a former FEC commissioner, told POLITICO in May. “The fact that they’ve only tried to nominate one person to the FEC — I infer from that that they actually like the way the agency has performed.”

Democracy 21 President Fred Wertheimer also noted the lack of Obama nominations.

“We urge President Obama to move promptly to fill the remaining four expired seats on the FEC with commissioners who are committed to effective enforcement of the law,” he said. “The FEC is a failed, broken agency that has been entirely dysfunctional for the last several years. The agency has a long way to go to establish credibility as a real campaign finance enforcement agency and only time will tell whether that is going to happen.”

Reform groups praised Ravel, who has been working on undisclosed money as part of her work with the California Fair Political Practices Commission.

“I think Ann Ravel will make a great commission on the FEC. She’s done excellent work for the state of California and the people of California to promote transparency,” said Paul S. Ryan, senior counsel for the Campaign Legal Center. “I’m happy to hear her put forward as a nominee.”